THE KAPLINSKI SYSTEM documentary film project was selected for THE BALTIC SEA FORUM FOR DOCUMENTARIES 2010/
RIGA, LATVIA, 7th to 12th September 2010/
Check out their web page here/
lundi 30 août 2010
An Article by Jaan Kaplinski/ From his blog: http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/
Sofi Oksanen and the Stalin Award
The immense success of Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" (Puhdistus) astonishes me. But recalling books I read in my childhood I think I understand it to some degree. In the early fifties of the XX century I had not many books to read in Estonian, and after having read nearly all children's books published in the independent Estonia that were accessible to me I began to read Soviet literature, mostly books for grown-ups. Among those translated were a couple of dozen books by laureates of the Stalin award. I remember some of them that were really well written as Peter the First by Aleksei Tolstoy or In the Trenches of Stalingrad. Most of everything else has become something anonymous, a fuzzy whole of half-mythological stories with sadistic Germans and their collaborators as anti-heroes and brave patriotic Partisans as heroes. But nevertheless, these books had a certain appeal, the fitted into some of our deep psychological needs, to our needs for fairy tales, for tales of heroes and villains. Oksanen's book falls into the same category as the Stalinist books of my childhood, only the heroes and anti-heroes have exchanged their role. It's a skillfully written horror story with many corpses. Let it be. My only, but very serious objection to the book is that it pretends to be a realistic story about life in Soviet Estonia in the second half of the XXth century, and seems to have been accepted as such by the public in Europe and America. S. O. who has no direct experience of the time and events she describes has taken parts of our life, sewing them together according to some age-old rules of ideological-mythological literature, and is now selling it in the West. She is selling something that pretends to be our life, but isn't. Our life in the Soviet Union was not a horror story! Of course, there were many horrific episodes, years of terror and counter-terror, but as a whole, we lived a life that was often quite interesting and funny. I cannot approve the idea that my life, the life of my parents, my friends, my colleagues was not a life worth living, that we felt we were prisoners in a large prison camp. The USSR after the death of Stalin was not a prison camp. It was a lousy country, but there were and there are many much more lousy countries in the world. One of my basic convictions is that there is no Devil (probably no God either, but here it's not important). Soviet Union was not a diabolical country. And the lives we lived in the second half of the XXth century in this country were not lived according to some diabolical rules and supervised by the Devil or his henchmen. I don't want anybody to take my life away from me and sell an adulterated version of it to unknowing people abroad. Dixi.
Jaan Kaplinski
Check out Kaplinski's blog at:
http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/
The immense success of Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" (Puhdistus) astonishes me. But recalling books I read in my childhood I think I understand it to some degree. In the early fifties of the XX century I had not many books to read in Estonian, and after having read nearly all children's books published in the independent Estonia that were accessible to me I began to read Soviet literature, mostly books for grown-ups. Among those translated were a couple of dozen books by laureates of the Stalin award. I remember some of them that were really well written as Peter the First by Aleksei Tolstoy or In the Trenches of Stalingrad. Most of everything else has become something anonymous, a fuzzy whole of half-mythological stories with sadistic Germans and their collaborators as anti-heroes and brave patriotic Partisans as heroes. But nevertheless, these books had a certain appeal, the fitted into some of our deep psychological needs, to our needs for fairy tales, for tales of heroes and villains. Oksanen's book falls into the same category as the Stalinist books of my childhood, only the heroes and anti-heroes have exchanged their role. It's a skillfully written horror story with many corpses. Let it be. My only, but very serious objection to the book is that it pretends to be a realistic story about life in Soviet Estonia in the second half of the XXth century, and seems to have been accepted as such by the public in Europe and America. S. O. who has no direct experience of the time and events she describes has taken parts of our life, sewing them together according to some age-old rules of ideological-mythological literature, and is now selling it in the West. She is selling something that pretends to be our life, but isn't. Our life in the Soviet Union was not a horror story! Of course, there were many horrific episodes, years of terror and counter-terror, but as a whole, we lived a life that was often quite interesting and funny. I cannot approve the idea that my life, the life of my parents, my friends, my colleagues was not a life worth living, that we felt we were prisoners in a large prison camp. The USSR after the death of Stalin was not a prison camp. It was a lousy country, but there were and there are many much more lousy countries in the world. One of my basic convictions is that there is no Devil (probably no God either, but here it's not important). Soviet Union was not a diabolical country. And the lives we lived in the second half of the XXth century in this country were not lived according to some diabolical rules and supervised by the Devil or his henchmen. I don't want anybody to take my life away from me and sell an adulterated version of it to unknowing people abroad. Dixi.
Jaan Kaplinski
Check out Kaplinski's blog at:
http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/
mercredi 18 août 2010
vendredi 13 août 2010
Dostoyevsky and mystery/
"Dostoïevski a dit que l'homme est un mystère.
Moi je dirais que l'homme est une surprise,
pour soi même et pour les autres
assez souvent.
Et la vie est pleine de surprises."
"Dostoyevsky said that man is a mystery.
I woudl say that man is a surprise,
for himself and for others quite often.
And life is full of surprises."
Jaan Kaplinski/
From interview of July 15th 2009/
Moi je dirais que l'homme est une surprise,
pour soi même et pour les autres
assez souvent.
Et la vie est pleine de surprises."
"Dostoyevsky said that man is a mystery.
I woudl say that man is a surprise,
for himself and for others quite often.
And life is full of surprises."
Jaan Kaplinski/
From interview of July 15th 2009/
vendredi 6 août 2010
EVENING HYMNS/ CEDARS
I recently received a message from EVENING HYMNS band leader Jonas Bonnetta whose music and lyrics are sometimes inspired by KAPLINSKI's poetry and words/ World is small/
Here is the beautiful song CEDARS/
They are from Canada/
They have a website/
mercredi 4 août 2010
JAAN KAPLINSKI HAS A BLOG: READ IT AND LEARN/
Jaan Kaplinski has a blog and writes not only in Estonian or Russian in it but also in English. A good reason to check it out and read it and get a singular point of you on today's international matters:
http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/
http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/
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